My record of surviving

Why hello there, Internet-o-trons. I didn’t hear you come in. Welcome to my blog. Make yourselves comfortable.

My name is Emily. I’m a twenty-something transgender woman from the Internet. I’ll write more about myself in due course. It’s taken me a while, but I’m finally creating a public space for myself to scribble in, to digest and process various things, and to hopefully contribute something original and worthwhile, however small, back to the world.

This morning, Natalie Reed, one of my very favorite people on the Internet (and off it too), posted a manifesto of sorts for trans women. I’d quote the whole thing, but really you should just go read it. As I begin my own blog, though, it’s this part of her post that really speaks to me:

We all have our origin stories. And our secret identities. And super-powers. And sometimes even our own little Justice Leagues to hang out with.

And amongst our histories we also all have our tragedies. All the violence that has been done to us, all the ways our hearts have been broken, all the times our identities have been stripped from us and invalidated, all the friends and family who left, all the horrible things that people or society or we ourselves did to “cure” us, all the parts of our bodies we still feel dysphoric about or ashamed of and the parts we can’t change, all of our shame and loss and grief.

And from those tragedies, in each of us has emerged a survivor. Someone’s who’s made it through. Someone who’s been dealt at least a glimpse of the genuine pain that life is capable of meting out on a person (at random) and still, somehow, found strength and grace. Someone who continues to walk, breathe, talk, laugh, smile. I don’t care how down on herself a trans woman gets (and yeah, we can get really down on ourselves), she still has managed to pull herself through really awful things that can and do kill people. Even at her weakest, most ashamed, most vulnerable, a trans woman is still a fucking badass.

I’m about a month into transitioning. Things are scary, unfamiliar, and intimidating. Doubt? Fear? Apprehension? I’m full of them. This blog will be my history, my secret identity made public, my record of surviving. My attempt to find that strength and grace, and become fucking badass. I’m nervous about it, not simply because I’m a much better consumer of writing/blogging/content/media than a producer of the same, but because I need to do this and I don’t really know how.

I plan to post my own writing, both personal stuff about myself and my transition, but also about feminism, transgender issues, science fiction…pretty much whatever crosses my mind. I don’t really wish to make this “just another trans woman’s transition blog”—not that I have anything against that, but it’s not really all I’m after. We’ll see where this blog takes us.

The day I decided to transition, one of my dear friends told me that instead of hating myself for delaying until this point in my life, I should be grateful. Everything that had happened in the past was necessary in order to bring me to this point. I am learning how to be grateful for coming here, to acknowledge where I was and where I’m going, to love myself.

This is my record of surviving, and I’m looking forward to it. Let’s do this.